


Cherry Tapping

by Surgeworks



Category: RWBY
Genre: Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Obvious pining but Neptune won't admit it, Struggles with assertions of heterosexuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:27:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24127375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Surgeworks/pseuds/Surgeworks
Summary: Bars and nightclubs, bartenders and dance floors, little club soda drinks with the umbrellas in them...
Relationships: Neptune Vasilias/Sun Wukong
Comments: 1
Kudos: 25





	1. Cherry Tapping

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gouchua](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gouchua/gifts).



> _Cherry Tapping_ : Taking down a tough enemy using weak attacks.

_I’m not gay, I’m not gay, I’m not gay…_

And that was what he’d been repeating to himself damn near every week, then every day, since meeting that beautiful bastard.

Neptune Vasilias was many things, most of them good, a few of them enviable. He was tall, good-looking, had a wonderful smile, was an instant and effortless hit with the ladies, he even had money. He was a swim team star, with the body to prove it. All of that, and he still had time to be an excellent student, too.

And of course, he was a hundred percent heterosexual. Not a single hair on his head could be called anything weird, uncommon, unconventional, unorthodox, or the slightest bit bully-able. Just popular and well-liked and nothing else.

And he wouldn’t have to keep assuring himself of that if he just hadn’t had that encounter with that one guy with the monkey tail.

Neptune didn’t handle drunkenness gracefully. Everyone who knew him well enough knew that much. He had a fairly decent tolerance, though not the best. But he got more flirty than usual once he let the drink get to him. All well and good, until he the person he ended up drunkenly sucking face with happened to be a dude.

Not a bad-looking dude, mind you. Just, a dude. They had ended up making out in the corner of a club, and damn it, even through the haze of alcohol he’d been able to commit the taste of his kiss to memory, and could still taste it on his lips today. There had been a moment there, though he refused to dwell on it too much, where things had been getting handsy and he’d almost done...something or other. Not entirely sure what, given he was firmly straight and wouldn’t begin to know what to do with the man, but he’d broken it off before things could get too far.

So that was a thing. He’d officially had ‘that’ occasion added to his college misadventures, making out with a guy while plastered. No big deal, happened to a lot of people, didn’t mean anything.

Except, his performance had been suffering lately. Neptune was hardly the only one of his little group of roommates—consisting of Scarlet, Sage, and himself—who couldn’t keep a steady girlfriend, but he got the brunt of teasing about it anyway due to having the biggest track record as a relentless flirt. He was fine with that. He was more about the chase than the prize at the end anyway, and it helped his popular jock image. He hardly needed girls in his life on any basis except a rotating one. As Scarlet often said, not enough room in his life for a steady girlfriend with his boys at home taking up space. Well, his exact words tended to be ‘with all of that manflesh taking up space at home’, but Neptune preferred to misremember that in light of his current turmoils.

Turmoils, such as the fact that he’d been failing at even flirting it up with girls lately, losing his mojo. All he needed to do was catch sight of a blonde girl, and he’d start stumbling over his words just like he used to in high school, reminded oh so much of the blond locks on that abdomen-laden faunus’ head. His face kept flashing in front of Neptune’s eyes, frustrating him. It was a nuisance and a bother, and unwelcome when he was trying to make a hookup happen. It even kept happening when he was trying to get off in completely private quarters on his own time, and _that_ was unacceptable.

He’d thought about going and finding this man who had so upended his securities lately. Just to reassure himself that he wasn’t all _that_ good-looking, and on the off chance his romantic pursuits were suffering out of some warped sense of jealousy or tanking self-esteem. That wasn’t the plan he played out, though. No, instead, he’d decided to double down and had finally landed himself a date with a pretty girl who was clearly _very_ into him.

🍒🍒🍒

“Well, have a nice night! And stay safe!”

Weiss was surprisingly chill with the way the date had gone. Neptune hoped he hadn’t been too much of a downer. They hadn’t traded numbers, so in the end she had no reason to expect a follow-up date. She seemed to have had a lot of fun, but he just…hadn’t.

Yeah, he’d had good food and been able to keep a smile on his face, but he hadn’t felt anything click. Every time he tried to charm her, it seemed to work, but he found himself responding to nothing from her. It wasn’t like he was incapable of getting hot for a hot girl, but...hell, she’d even invited him inside, and he’d said no for some reason. He totally could’ve scored that if he’d wanted to. What was it? Was he really running low on steam this badly? Or, was it possible that this was the same as it always was, and he just had never noticed how girls weren’t his—

 _No_. He was _not_ going to think that.

He felt tired, but not enough to just go home. After a minute of staring at the gate where Weiss had entered her family’s grounds, and the door where she’d disappeared, he finally started the keys in the ignition and drove off. It wasn’t too late yet, dinner had been quick. He could probably joyride for a little bit, maybe kill some time at a bar or a movie theater…yeah, he thought he’d do that.

 _Not gay, not gay, not gay_ , he repeated to himself over and over as he went back into town. He was a smart guy, a strong guy, and he knew what he was. He was a stone fortress and this little bit of chipping doubt wasn’t going to take him down. It was ridiculous to let this get to him this badly.

He drove around the blocks of Main Street, trying to find some place that looked busy enough and loud enough that he could forget his worries. Maybe something action-packed and violent was playing?

_Left here...no, don’t wanna park here. Do I want some gelato? No, too cold. I might could use a burger, I didn’t eat much on my date with Weiss…_

He drove lazily down the street, slowing his car for the crowds of teens and students that populated this area of the city in the evenings. The movie theater idea was dying in his head, since he didn’t feel like it was worth the cash right now, nor did he want to go into one and deal with obnoxious patrons. So he kept his eye on other venues, window rolled down, glancing up and down the street.

_!!!_

Neptune nearly hit another car swerving, enduring several angry honks as he yelled apologies out his window and pulled around haphazardly. He stopped his car at a safe spot and turned to look in his mirror. He spotted a flash of yellow disappearing into a building.

...

That couldn’t be him, right? But no, he’d had the tail and everything. The jock thought he might’ve even been wearing the same clothes, although he couldn’t remember those too well. He got out of his car, dropping his keys in his pocket and peering over at the building he’d gone into. It was a club.

All of a sudden, Neptune felt the strong urge to get a drink.

He crossed the street, trying to ignore dirty looks from the people who had witnessed his automotive fumble, and headed up to the bar’s front door. The fold-up sign out front read that they were having half-off tonight. He headed inside.

It was a small place, but a vibrant one. For what little room there was on the dance floor, patrons were packing it, and the lights flashed in a bunch of different colors. He immediately spotted who he was after, sitting up at the bar with a wine glass in hand full of something vividly colored. Neptune stood dumbly in the doorway for a minute, not sure what exactly he was planning to do, but finally strolled up and took an empty seat next to him.

Nothing was said or done for a while. He busied himself pretending to look at a menu, but really stealing glances at the guy next to him. The haze of drunkenness was great at robbing details from him, but the more glances he stole, the more he was sure that yes, it was that exact same guy he’d made out with inside another, similar nightclub.

“Can I get ya anything son?”

The friendly voice of a waitress was attending to him. He looked around, having not made his decision yet or really even committed to getting anything.

“Um...yeah…” he said, pointing to the menu and singling out one of their drinks that looked obnoxiously colorful without actually looking at it, and then “Serve it long”. She nodded and moved to go get the materials, while the faunus looked up at him, having realized someone was sitting next to him.

Neptune met his eyes, and _damn_ , but he could understand why even a straight guy like himself would be a little dumbstruck looking at this dude. No denying it, he was _gorgeous_. Eyes a bright blue, a nice jawbone, taller than he seemed from a distance, a broad shape, and his jacket was left open displaying a positively ridiculous six-pack. Seriously, Neptune was proud of his body (whatever ‘pool noodle’ comments people liked to make about it—he kept in shape), but this dude was chiseled. He was dressed extremely casually besides—jeans, sneakers, a gold chain over his chest, and some hand wraps that made him look exceptionally cool. He had a smile on his face that Neptune was sure had the power to cause cardiac arrest, or pregnancy. Maybe both. He wouldn’t be out of place in the crowd of popular jocks Neptune tended to hang with, except in the sense that he might just outshine them all.

Neptune felt a _thud_ against the stone walls of his proverbial fortress. …Yeah, the dude was hot. So what?

“You okay there?” came the faunus’ pleasant voice.

“Huh? No, no, I just—I mean, yeah, I am. I—sorry. Don’t mind me.” he answered, kicking himself for fumbling his words so badly.

“Do I know you from somewhere? You seem familiar.”

Neptune swallowed. He wasn’t sure how he should answer that. They didn’t really know each other, no. They’d just been kissing like the world would end if they stopped some amount of time ago, maybe a month, and he couldn’t really say ‘ _we made out while buzzed off our asses and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since_ ’.

That wasn’t what was going on anyway. He had barely thought of the guy since meeting him, if you could call that meeting someone.

“I, uh—”

“Oh yeah, I remember you. You and I got pretty intense at another club a while back, didn’t we?”

Neptune was screaming internally. The music in this place wasn’t nearly loud enough to mask polite conversation, and he looked around frantically to see if anyone had heard, or if anyone who had heard cared. He did _not_ need that said where other people might hear it and get ideas.

“Shhh! Don’t say shit like that out loud!” he hissed, trying to do so without coming off as rude. “Listen, whatever went down that night, I’m _straight_ , okay? I don’t wanna be mean, I just—”

“Right, right, sorry!” Sun said, lowering his voice also. His smile was a little sheepish now, but still in place. “My bad.”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t worry about it.” he said, heart still hammering. “Umm… It’s cool seeing you again, though. How’ve you been, uhh…w-what was your name again? I don’t think we ever got properly acquainted…”

“It’s Sun, Sun Wukong.” came the man confidently, holding out a hand. “You?”

“Neptune Vasilias.” he said, feeling a strange dryness in his mouth and a stitch in the back of his throat. He took the hand offered to him and shook it, feeling another scrape against his walls as he did so. “I’m on swim team at Mistral Uni. You go there?” he asked.

“Nah, not a student. Taking time off before I hit the books.” Sun said, and Neptune saw him look away quickly. For a second, the pleasant, easygoing visage had shifted into something else. It hadn’t lasted long enough for him to read it well, only dismiss it.

Neptune’s drink arrived then, a pale pink concotion in a wine glass with a cherry floating on top. A little paper umbrella fold was stuck into the stem. He smiled when he looked at it, and brought it to his lips, and _son of a bitch_ —!

His fortress walls experienced a cascade of blows as memory rushed through his head at the same time liquid flowed over his tongue. This flavor! It was exactly the thing he remembered tasting, exactly the memory of that night that was most vivid in his head. It was dizzying, how sharply it reminded him of kissing the man next to him.

He looked, somewhat alarmed with himself, over at Sun, who was gazing at him curiously.

“Good?”

Well, yeah, it was. It wasn’t the type of thing he’d normally drink, but it was alright. Very tangy and fruity, almost to the point of puckering his lips. Probably masking more alcohol than it let on by appearances alone. He glanced over to see if Sun by chance had the same thing, but it was a different color and there was a kiwi sticking out of his.

Neptune nodded and took another sip, trying to control himself. It was just a fucking drink, chill out.

“Swimming sounds fun. I never get to do it as often as I like. Are you good?”

He sat up a little straighter, smiling. Swimming was something he was not only good at, it was something he excelled at. “Top of my class. I’m a bullet in the water.”

“Oh yeah? You impress a lot of girls that way, I take it?”

He smoothed his hair back, a grin coming into place. Not that he was one to brag, but yes, he did impress a lot of girls that way. Even if he never actually pursued much with any of them. His grin faltered a littl:e as he remembered his current troubles with women, which he blamed on…well, okay, maybe it was unfair to blame Sun for all of that.

“Got ‘em crawlin’ out of the woodwork to get a piece of this.” he bragged, hoping that by practicing his usual bravado, he’d feel some of it, too. “I can give you some tips, if you like.”

Sun laughed. “I think I’ll pass. I’ve got all I need to get the ladies’ attention right here.” he said, pointing to his core. Neptune’s eyes followed his gesture, and _sheesh_ , you could grate a full selection of cheeses on those things and the abs would still be more mouthwatering. What kind of ridiculous sit-up regimen was he on? He tried not to be too intimidated, or rather, too impressed.

 _Girls aren’t the only ones who’d come running for abs like that_ , passed a thought in his head.

 _Shut up, damn it_ , another thought told the first one.

“It’s too bad you don’t go to uni with me. You’d fit in great with me and my guy friends.”

“You think so? Maybe we can hang out together sometime.” Sun answered. He slid off of his barstool, and Neptune kept his eyes firmly away from his butt. “Do you dance?” he asked, nodding towards the dance floor.

“Huh? Nah, nah, I don’t dance.” he answered honestly. That was possibly the one thing he wasn’t all that great at, enough to avoid it where he could. Besides, he wasn’t sure he wanted to push that sort of boundary with Sun Wukong and his six-pack of death.

Sun shrugged in response and made his way over to the small crowd of patrons bouncing to the club’s beat. The music couldn’t entirely drown out the reverberating beats from a larger club on the other side of one of the walls.

For a little while, he just observed Sun, moving his body in ways that weren’t even all that risque, but should probably still be illegal. Dude had good moves. And that much was all Neptune was willing to think as, sip by sip, he drained his drink. He wasn’t sure he liked being here. Wasn’t sure he liked being around this guy. They’d barely traded words, and Neptune somehow felt as though he really wanted to be this guy’s friend and also really wanted to never see him again. It might be best to slip out while he had the chance.

He hopped off of his barstool, moving to the cash register to pay for the drink.

“What was that you served me, again?” he asked the waitress as she came over to take his card.

“A cherry limeade, sweety. Little bit of vodka in it, but nothing serious.”

Huh. So that was the taste serving as a vivid memory for him. He looked over to the dance floor at Sun, mulling over whether it was perhaps a favorite of his, only to be dismayed as he found Sun looking right back at him. The faunus gave a smile and a wave. Chip, thud, chip, thud.

“That your boyfriend, hun?”

“Huh?! Wha—n-no, he’s just—”

“I’m only jokin’, sweetie, I think everyone on this block heard you say you were straight just a minute ago. Go on now, enjoy your evening.”

Neptune took his card back and strolled out the door, feeling as the cool night air hit him that he was walking away from something a bit earlier than he should have.


	2. Picking

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Cherry Picking_ : the action or practice of choosing and taking only the most beneficial or profitable cases that support a position from what is available and ignoring the ones that don't.

“ _Neptune, you wanna go out again tonight?”_

“ _Yeah—actually, there was this one place I was hoping to go...”_

So things had been going for a while now. Each time his friends went out on the town, he went with them, always highly recommending some new place they try. He wasn’t nearly this adventurous normally. In fact, he was actually rather quiet on the night scene when he was out with friends, usually following Scarlet’s lead and simply accepting wherever he wanted to go. But in the past week, Neptune had become a sudden fount of information regarding ‘good’ bars and restaurants to hang out in, and enthusiastically endorsing them.

There was an ulterior motive, of course. All of these places he kept pushing his roommates to visit with him, and visiting on his own whenever they couldn’t, had been researched thoroughly beforehand, specifically their menus. The places Neptune was always wanting to hang out in were all venues that served a particular fruity drink he’d been voracious for lately.

Just the drink, of course. That was all. A very fruity, very tasty drink that he’d just been dying to try again ever since he’d first sipped it.

And yet funnily enough, he hadn’t ordered it once.

He didn’t have a lot of control over where the three of them went, but he’d been piping up a lot more often about which new places he wanted to try, or which places he wanted to revisit. Occasionally, he’d thought about throwing a wrench into things whenever Scarlet or Sage suggested a place he’d stricken off the list of viable establishments in his ‘private research’—thought about suggesting that the place didn’t have good rum, or that he’d seen roving bands of drunk sorority girls hanging out there, but he refrained. Guilt and ‘you’re a bad friend’ thoughts ate at him when he even considered it.

Still, things mostly went his way. Like tonight, for example. The establishment they were headed to had a smoky, after-hours, long-day-for-white-collar-business feel to it, and most of the patrons were well over the typical college student age. He truly doubted someone as vibrant and swaggering as Sun would be caught here, but hey, it had a dance floor, and he’d double-checked, and they definitely served cherry limeades.

Sage seemed to receive it well when they walked in through the door, though Scarlet was mimicking Neptune’s own expression. Sage did well around older people, made conversation easily with them. Of course, Sage got along with almost everyone, being much too calm to argue and too imposing to start arguments with. The three of them walked past some tables, dodging some tipsy middle-aged women and a college professor Neptune thought he recognized, and made their way past the dance floor and up to the bar.

A Mojito for Sage, a Manhattan for Neptune, and just straight rum for Scarlet. Their typical drinks of choice.

He brought the drink to his lips, finding that the usual subtle taste he used to like so much wasn’t appealing to him all that much anymore. He put that much down to his own aesthetic. He’d stopped blacking his hair, had stopped blacking his coffee, maybe it was time to stop blacking his beers, too.

Sage and Scarlet were on either side of him, chatting away both with other patrons and each other. Neptune was only superficially part of the conversation, not because they didn’t include him, but because his mind was on other things. He made enough effort not to be rude, but he only heard half the words between them. There wasn’t really a discreet way to ask any waiters or bartenders if they’d seen any monkey faunuses lately, so instead he just turned away from the bar and towards the dance floor when he sensed that he could safely slip out of the talk.

The patrons, now that he looked, weren’t all over the age of thirty. He saw a fair few student-aged people and even some more fun-looking individuals sprinkled in here and there. He tried to look out for any that seemed familiar, any colors he’d seen before. It wasn’t as though the crowd was all that thick, so if Sun were here, he should be able to spot him easily...

“Who’re you looking for?” Sage asked from his left, snapping him out of his thoughts.

“He doesn’t know, he hasn’t laid eyes on her yet.” Scarlet mentioned from his right, nudging him in the ribs. “He’s scoping out the dance floor.”

Well, at least his excuses were made. Without bothering to respond, he continued searching the crowd, but found no head of spiky blond hair. He set his drink back on the counter, nodding at Sage to keep an eye on it, before beginning to move through the dance floor.

Weaving through bodies, he searched, moving from one end of the room to the other in a zig-zag pattern. He still did not find any hint of Sun Wukong, and was eventually forced to go into the bathroom at the end of the dance floor disappointed. After one last burst of hope that he might be in there taking a leak, that, too, was dashed.

He walked up to the sink and stared into the mirror, sighing. _Another one down_. In reality, he knew the chances of seeing the same near-stranger at a bar without knowing anything about him except what drink he’d ordered all of once was...well, a fool’s errand. He couldn’t really explain even to himself why he was so hellbent on seeing Sun again. He just...really, really wanted to. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He did have some inkling of an idea why. But he wasn’t going to admit it to himself.

Well, in that case…why not have his usual brand of fun? Flirting was his game, and he was good at it. He may as well find a girl to chat up, instead of breaking character.

He exited the bathroom, and wandered around yet again. Yeah, a fair few pretty girls here and there. But he passed them by on the dance floor to get back to the bar. There were some girls up there, too. He kept his eye out, wanting to see what they’d drink.

🍒🍒🍒

He wasn’t the only one who had hooked up with a girl that night. Despite the circumstances, both Sage and Scarlet successfully charmed a chick each and walked out of the club with their dates, offering Neptune and his own hookup the chance to come along with them. Neptune had denied them, saying he was going to have fun here for a while. And he did. But the girl eventually got too sloshed to let anything come of it, and he sent her home with some friends who could drive her safely.

Just like he did with the last girl he danced with. And just like he would with the next one, and the next one after that.

He now sat at a table, staring down into the remnants of ice floating in his Manhattan, well into his third refill. The night was young. There would be plenty of other girls whose lips tasted like cherries and lime. He’d get his fix again.

But he didn’t feel like his usual flirty self like he did when alcohol started to sodden him. Well, he did—in fact, he was pretty sure some of the things that the girls in this bar had giggled at after they came out of his mouth in the past few minutes wouldn’t be half as tolerated if they weren’t just as drunk as he was—but he wasn’t making any more moves just yet. He found himself doing more scouting, and his eyes were lingering not just on female patrons, but male ones.

_Not gay, not gay, not gay…_

It was just women. And it was just the drinks. Sun had nothing to do with it, and neither did liking men. He could sate this little craving one lipstick-laced kiss at a time. And the choice of drink would ensure it was _only_ women, because he’d not yet seen one man in this bar risk his pride or reputation ordering anything even vaguely fruity or colorful. He liked that. It kept things secure.

He sighed, a low exhale that made a wooshing sound as it passed the rim of his glass. God, he just wanted to kiss someone and _enjoy_ it. Why was that difficult all of a sudden?

More than feeling different, he was afraid to think that he _didn’t_ feel any different. He was afraid that he was experiencing romance the same way he always had, and he was only realizing it wasn’t satisfying thanks to...new points of reference, maybe. It terrified him to think that maybe he’d always sucked this hard at dating, and was only just now catching onto it. And…and even if he did nothing but hook up with a girl every night for the rest of his life, he _still_ wanted to see Sun again. He hated himself for that.

He pushed his drink to the side and went back to the bathroom, once he had relocated it. Once he was at the sink, he looked in the mirror again and made himself put on a winning smile. Made sure that it would charm whatever lovely lady he pointed it at. There were still plenty of girls around. Plenty of them were still ordering drinks. He could still replicate the kiss he needed so badly and the taste of it on his lips. He walked back out, as smooth and confident as ever, if just a little bit more buzzed than usual. He zeroed in on the bar again, and started examining the selection.

“ _Hey there, can I buy you a drink?”_

🍒🍒🍒

Neptune strode out to his car, too drunk to be furious with himself. Before he could open the door, he had to unlock it, which was proving exceptionally difficult. He had to find the right key...but then he realized he only felt one key in his hand. Wait, no, that was definitely two keys. Did he have the right one? No, that was his house key. Ah, there it was. But then, fitting it into the lock shouldn’t be this much of a chore.

“Nah-ah. Can’t let you do that, son.”

An arm whose owner he didn’t care to identify was pulling him away from his car, and he flopped around, not all that determined to break out of its grip.

“Come on, you lovesick bastard, let’s get you a taxi. You can come get your car in the morning.”

That one, he took issue with. _Lovesick_ . He shouldn’t be that easy to see through. And anyways, he _wasn’t_ lovesick. He was just going through the motions of trying in vain to replicate the most intense kiss he’d ever had with one of the hottest people he’d ever made contact with, and struggling with how badly he was failing at it. It didn’t mean he was in love. Or gay. It had nothing to do with men or women, it was just a personal thing. Fucking asshole.

He was still straight. Still one of the most popular guys at his school. Still Neptune Vasilias.

After what seemed like two hours of waiting, but was probably more like twenty minutes, the taxi came, and he stumbled in. After directing the driver towards his place, and throwing a wad of money into the front, he laid down on the back seat, his hand on the car door opposite the one he’d entered the car through. He figured that if he felt like throwing up all of his drinks, he could at least do the man, or woman, the courtesy of opening the car door and doing it onto the street, and not onto the flooring.

His head was starting to ache slightly. And he had to piss. _And_ he was hard. When the fuck had he gotten hard?

The driver had on some shitty music, but Neptune didn’t mind. It wasn’t quite invasive enough to be obnoxious, and it provided some background noise to keep him steady in the drifting car whether everything otherwise felt like it was swaying a bit too much. Yeah, he definitely shouldn’t be driving in this state. He should probably thank that bartender when he went back tomorrow morning. He knew his alcohol tolerance wasn’t the best, but he hadn’t figured he’d had _that_ much to drink. He’d have to learn a lesson from this.

Despite his precautions, nothing came up from his stomach during the ride home, which didn’t take as long as he’d thought it would. The driver mumbled something about getting as close to the right apartment as he could, and to stay safe on his way in, and Neptune waved him off. He started the journey up towards his room, stopping before entering the building to take a leak in the bushes. After doing that and zipping back up with some difficulty, he opened the door and started on the way up.

It was a long, dizzying climb even though it was only one flight of stairs. It was good there was a handrail. It shouldn’t have been so affecting given he only lived on the second floor. The real vertigo came when walking down the long, stretching hallway towards his room. Which one of these doors was it again? Damn it, he couldn’t remember… This one, he was pretty sure it was this one. No, his key wasn’t working. That, or he was just too damn drunk again, but he didn’t think it was this one.

He heard noise from nearby, and moved further down the hallway. He identified his door—yeah, there was that familiar scratch on the frame—and reached for the handle, only to realize that the sounds were coming from behind this exact door.

He recognized two of the voices. Scarlet’s and Sage’s. They were moaning and yelling. The other voices were clearly the ecstasy-filled shrieks of the girls they’d brought home.

Disgust filled him. Great, fantastic. Were they really still going at it like that? It was late, they ought to have sent the chicks home already. He didn’t ordinarily make a fuss at the sex lives of his roommates—they did the same for him, after all—but he’d really been hoping to stroll in, flop down on his bed, and work on this woodie until it went away. Now he realized that would be both awkward and rude.

But...he didn’t really want to go anywhere else. He actually just wanted to sleep. His boner was throbbing incessantly in his pants, and Neptune was getting annoyed. _Fine, whatever_. He was out of fucks to give.

Undoing his belt and unzipping his jeans, he leaned against the wall next to the door frame, taking his hard-on out of his pants and starting to stroke. He really didn’t care about the consequences right now, he just wanted to spend himself and collapse somewhere.

While jacking himself off, Neptune leaned his head back against the wall, picking up sounds of the sex happening behind it. The moans were very clear through the wood, and he used them to fuel his libido, stroking faster. It wasn’t the girls whose delighted sounds he was using. He didn’t even bother with them. No, it was the boys’.

Sage’s moans were better than Scarlet’s, he decided, focusing on those. Sage had that rich, deep voice that let you know, even without seeing it, that someone was getting filled with his sizeable shaft and getting it good. Neptune both hated himself for how hot it made him, and couldn’t be assed enough to care about stopping himself. He stroked faster whenever those baritone moans met his ear.

“ _Ungh….ungh...”_

Something was missing. Thoughtless, Neptune shimmied his pants and underwear a little lower, so that his bare butt was against the wall. He tried to be still and not make too much noise. Wouldn’t want to interrupt the fun times happening in his own damn apartment, right? A finger slipped down past his shaft, past his balls and between his thighs. He worked it into himself, hissing past gritted teeth and then groaning. Did he really care at this point? No.

“ _Fuck...”_

It didn’t take long. He moved his hips, fucking his hands, until his stupid, traitorous body rocked and shuddered, and he spilled, sending his load across the hall and spraying the opposite wall with the ropes. He didn’t care about that either, really. He didn’t give a shit about anything, he just wanted to slump down and sleep. And, after pulling his underwear and pants up but not bothering with the zipper or belt, that was exactly what he did, leaning down against the wall and simply laying there.

He was beyond confused at this point. He was frustrated and sick with himself and frankly annoyed with everything around him right now. He hoped he wouldn’t have too terrible of a hangover tomorrow, but he wasn’t expecting much. At least he probably wouldn’t dream of that asshole faunus with the sexy grin. He usually had very dreamless sleep when he had alcohol in his system, let alone when he got sopping wet drunk off his ass like this.

He dozed off, sinking into nothing.


	3. Biting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Biting the Cherry_ : Jumping on a second chance or opportunity, especially if the first time was a failure.

Two weeks had passed.

Neptune was just about ready to call a quits. Despite his best efforts, he hadn’t seen hide nor hair of the faunus he was looking for. You wouldn’t think a guy with a blond tail who walked around with his abs out would fly under the radar so easily, but not only had Neptune himself not seen him, neither had anyone else, apparently, on the few occasions he’d swallowed his nerves and asked.

His roommates were flabbergasted at him. They both knew something was up, of course, and had offered their assistance and a shoulder to cry on, if necessary, but Neptune had staunchly refused to give up any details of what he was after. Both of them noticed how he’d gone out nearly every night this week, and spent a good portion of the day out of the house as well. It was unlike himself, he knew, to spend so much time in the vain pursuit of ‘fun’ when he was supposed to be the star player for being both fun _and_ on top of his studies.

He’d spent the entire day today catching up on all the work he’d been neglecting, and had been so intensely focused, at least by outward appearances, that Sage and Scarlet had agreed to leave the dorm and not come back for a day or two, just to let him focus.

Of course, his focus wasn’t nearly as rigid as he would like; his essays would’ve been finished quite a bit sooner had he not had to keep chunking them in the wastebin because he kept accidentally inserting entire wrong sentences when his thoughts wandered to Sun. The mountain of crumpled-up first drafts in the bin would probably provide a full script of his overly rehearsed spiel to Sun on the occasion he caught up with him:

_Oh, hey. Is that you, Sun? Man, I was kind of wondering when I was gonna run into you again, how’ve you been? Yeah I’ve been okay. I was just thinking, we kind of split too quickly last time we met, didn’t we? We should hang out sometime. I’ve been exploring lately, I know great places to eat and get drinks. We could start now, if you liked. You got a drinking partner tonight? Come on, I’ll buy you a round. No no, it’s cool, I need to get rid of some of this allowance. So come on, tell me about yourself, tell me what you’ve been up to…_

It was really kind of pathetic. His insistence to himself that his interest in Sun was in passing was becoming simple lip service at this point.

But he’d never gotten the chance to lay all those words out. His search had so far failed spectacularly, and his hopes had run almost as dry as his luck. Now that all of his work was finally finished, far later into the night than he would’ve liked, he was really hoping to go have some _actual_ fun. Not with any friends, just alone. Maybe he’d drown himself in drink and stop having to think about this for a while. Let his brain, wrung dry of everything in it from the past ten hours of strenuous study, float for a while on some Bronx…

He kicked up dust as he moved through the night now, a little wary. There were still people milling about on the streets, and the clubs were still open. Still, a pickpocket here and there might be lurking. He wanted to be inside. But which bar would he go to now? He didn’t really care to see anything familiar. He looked around him, searching the last corner of the district he hadn’t yet exhausted in his hare-brained search for a man.

All of a sudden, a hand gripped his shoulder and swung him around.

“Oh, hey, thank God you’re here. Can you pretend to be my boyfriend?”

Neptune blinked several times. He was still processing the sudden reappearance of…yeah, that was Sun alright. Same blond hair, same golden necklace, same white jacket standing in for a shirt that was left open to display those same ridiculous abs. Same gorgeous blue eyes…

“I…I-I’m sorry, what?” Neptune repeated, still stunned and not having properly heard what was being said to him.

“Can you pretend to be my boyfriend real quick?”

“Wha—wait, what? Why?”

Those words were the ones he couldn’t ever have expected. Why the hell would he…what? They barely knew each other! And they were out on the streets! What kind of sitcom bullshit request was that?!

“Yeah, yeah sure,” he said anyway, breathless. “What do you need me to do?”

“Once a week, it’s couples’ night at this bar down the street. Couples get a discount on entry and the price of any alcohol in their drinks cut out, and entry is free if you’ve got any proof of engagement. So c’mon, you stick with me and we get our limeades cheap, whaddya say?”

It wasn’t as though Neptune hadn’t prepared to meet Sun again. Hell, he’d spent the entire time he was looking for the man going over and over in his head what he might say to him. After a week of failure, he’d had just enough time to cover all his bases. He just hadn’t expected the man he was looking for to drop on him out of thin air like this, nor to greet him with a request so…loaded.

But even so, this sounded like a _fine_ plan. An opportunity like this, no way he wasn’t going to take it, even if it was a little unexpected. Count him in.

🍒🍒🍒

Neptune’s heart was hammering in his chest. _It’s just pretend, it’s just pretend, it’s just pretend_ , he repeated to himself in his head over and over. _You could totally get away with doing this with Sage or Scarlet_ , he told himself, _hell, they probably did it plenty on their own_.

But he was still staving off sweat and his heart was still hammering as he strode up, hand in Sun’s, heading to the front spot in the line right ahead of the door. Just gotta fake being in a relationship, and that was...definitely not something he’d done before. Nope. Never. How was this sort of thing being judged, anyway?

The bouncer was an odd choice if he’d ever seen one. A very tall woman, taller than him, with her hair in an updo that must’ve weighed quite a bit, and with a sleeveless dress on cut low to reveal...there was no way those were real, none at all. But he didn’t let his eyes linger. She had a clipboard in hand, and despite having watched her admit and dismiss several couples so far, Neptune could not figure out how this was decided.

With their hands still linked, they strode up. Sun moved ahead of him, and pointed to the coin necklace dangling on his chest.

“Just got engaged,” Sun said, with a completely different voice, “to this lovely man right here. Neptune, say hello.”

Neptune sheepishly waved hello, feeling his face heating up. Was that a Vacuo accent? It was thick, but convincing. The bouncer was overcome with a dramatic cooing expression, and he could practically see little hearts floating above her head. She stepped aside.

Sun led him into the bar, which was steeped in dark red light. Only when they were far enough away from the bouncer did Neptune raise his voice enough to ask Sun what that was.

“That was the accent I spoke with when I first came here.” said Sun. “I’m a Vacuo native. And we have something of a reputation for our gold and precious metals, so people tend to believe what I tell them about engagement rings and necklaces. So, you wanna dance with me? Or are we heading straight to the bar?”

“Let’s get drinks.” Neptune said hurriedly, in no rush to embarrass himself on the dance floor with his not-boyfriend. “That’s what we came here for, right?”

Sun still had his hand, and used it to lead him through the crowd of people and up to the bar, where proper color was provided by white neon tubes along the counter and display case. They sat down, and observed the goings-on: most people there weren’t necessarily glued to their significant others, and several didn’t seem to have partners at all, so it wasn’t some huge Valentines shop affair. Still, he could see the process of serving drinks. A guy with an angular jaw and a severe crew cut was serving drinks, and was being reminded by a woman hidden by curls to ‘keep up the tradition, Quint!’; Neptune saw that he looked rather bored while saying ‘you have to kiss for the alcohol discount’. Neptune looked at Sun, who was grinning at him.

“Whaddya think?”

“What, the discount? How much is it?” he asked nervously.

“This place uses fine wines and good vodka. Most of the expense for a drink is in the alcohol added to it. The rest of the drinks are usually way cheaper without it, so if you cut out the cost of the good stuff, that’s...about six or seven dollars off. Whaddya think, do I have seven dollar lips?”

It was a good thing the lighting was so red in here. If Neptune faced the dance floor, no one would realize how red his face was. He couldn’t stop himself from glancing at Sun’s lips...yeah, six dollars would be low-balling it.

Their conversation had caught the attention of Quint, who was now strolling over with a glass in hand.

“Oh thank God, you have no idea how tired I’ve been of watching straight people make out for virtually free drinks.”

This made a weird sound come out of Neptune’s throat; it was a laugh, but so constricted by his nervousness, he almost choked on it.

“What? We could be straight…” he said, feigning indignance.

“Eh?” came Sun’s voice, sounding bewildered. “Do I _look_ straight to you?”

“ _Yes_.” said Neptune bluntly. “You look like a surfer who walks around with a chick on each arm.”

Quint laughed, and Sun grinned, his tail flicking back and forth.

“So, what can I get you fellas?”

Sun opened his mouth, but it was Neptune who spoke first, confident in his choice.

“Two cherry limeades.” he said. “Load ‘em up.

Sun looked at him quizzically. Neptune tried to ignore the slight tinge of heat returning to his face after only a brief respite. He supposed it must’ve been pretty weird for him to know what Sun would order while barely knowing the guy. Still, it probably added a more convincing quality to their relationship act.

“So, I take it I _do_ have seven-dollar lips?” he said, raising an eyebrow and a grin growing back onto his face.

“It’s alright, you guys don’t have to do the kiss.” Quint said. “Gimme your card, I’ll take the vodka off.”

“No, no, it’s alright.” Neptune said defensively. “We’ll do it.”

He had no explanation for why he said it, or why he was really intending on doing it. He’d just been given a free out. If he wanted to secure his heterosexuality, make Sun understand that pretense was all it was and there was nothing going on between them, this would’ve been his chance. At this point it was no longer necessary, even to keep up the ruse. But…he was curious. Not just curious about his sexuality, however much he refused to even consider that it was in question. He was curious about _Sun_. He’d tasted those lips before, but he’d been so drunk at the time, and the faunus had been just as sloshed. It didn’t count. He wanted to see what those lips tasted like, how they felt on his, without the veil of vodka in the way beforehand.

There was a moment’s hesitation, and then Sun leaned in. And as was usually the case in the past few weeks, Neptune was instantly kicking himself for his decision, wondering if it had been a good idea. This wasn’t like back in the alleyway, there were people around, they had an audience. But still he leaned in, pumping that fake confidence through himself to get himself to cross that short gap of a foot, then six inches, then an inch…

Their lips met, and it… wasn’t that bad.

‘Bad’ wasn’t the proper term. He had been expecting some huge departure from what he was used to, but really, kissing a man didn’t seem to be all that different than kissing a girl. Heat seemed to burn through him, singing the edges off of his nervousness. More than easy, this was _enjoyable_.

It was like slipping down a ramp. It took maybe a second or two for the kiss to go from chaste to immodest and then to intense. Not fast, or demanding, but very close, very personal, very…deep. And somehow, he didn’t mind. There was a hand in the hair on the back of his head, and he didn’t mind that either, not even when it pressed to pull him in closer. Neptune tilted his head. His curiosity wasn’t sated…not even close…

“Agh—oh shit—sorry!”

Neptune jerked away, glancing across the counter. The noise had come back to the world and only then had he realized how it had seemed to stop. There was liquid flowing over the counter, and he pulled away before it could soak his sleeve. Quint seemed to have overflowed one of the drinks by accident. There was no need to look at his face to tell how embarrassed he was as he frantically wiped the counter with a rag.

Neptune turned to accept both the drinks and the apologies, becoming aware as he did so of a certain stiffness preventing him from moving as easily as he otherwise would.

_Yeah...I think it’s time to face facts, I’m definitely not straight._

The two of them sipped their limeades, Sun having taken the overflown one claiming he could probably handle the excess alcohol better. Neptune privately admitted that he was probably right. Quint quickly excused himself to tend to other couples, leaving them to discuss things on their own.

“I don’t understand why you didn’t just ask some girl to be your pretend-partner. Anyone you found would’ve said yes.”

“Yeah, but I thought it would work best with someone I knew.”

Neptune raised his eyebrow. “So, you and I ‘know’ each other?”

Sun grinned sheepishly and shrugged. “I mean, I’ve had my tongue in your mouth before, so I figured that was probably close enough. Besides, I was just thinking of who I might ask, and there you were, showing up right on time.”

“Yeah, there I was.” Neptune gave a short laugh. “I guess you lucked out.”

“I’ll say. I don’t think anyone else could’ve guessed my favorite drink. How did you know?”

Neptune’s blood went colder than the ice in his drink and he very quickly gave a too-loud, somewhat forced laugh.

“Lucky guess, I guess!”

The glint in Sun’s eyes made him uneasy.

Talk continued in the same easygoing-until-hard vein for a while; Sun would beckon Quint over when he wanted something more to drink, supplmenting his limeade with water, then clearing it with Neptune before asking for a refill. Neptune never got one himself, feeling that he was better safe than sorry, and richer for it.

Eventually, Sun excused himself, claiming he needed to go to the bathroom. Neptune was left alone at the bar, a little disappointed about this fact but nontheless glad to have some time to catch his breath and examine his surroundings. He took another look around, having been unable to take his eyes off of Sun’s for quite a while there.

Quint seemed to be hovering, as if hoping to pick up hints of couple’s drama. Neptune beckoned him over.

“So, I take it you’re, uh…” he said, not sure why he couldn’t get the last word out. ‘Into men’ might have been better, but…

“Gay? Yeah, all my life. I hope you’re not flirting with the bartender just ‘cuz your date’s busy for a minute.”

“Oh,” Neptune said, figuring that he could probably come clean about this by now, seeing as they’d gotten their drinks worth out of the ruse, “we’re not actually together. We played it up to get in.”

“No kidding? You made it pretty convincing. You two are cute together.”

“You’re not gonna kick us out for faking?”

“’Course not. That’s mostly what the whole ‘kissing discount’ is for—puts the fakers to the test. The idea is, even if you did cheat your way in, if you’re willing to actually kiss your fellow faker for the free alcohol, you deserve it for having the balls. It’s not like having a relationship is something that deserves free shit on its own value. The owner just likes putting hearts and red lights everywhere.”

“Oh.”

There was silence for a moment. Neptune let his thoughts wander back to the kiss he’d shared with Sun, and how it had been one of the most nerve-wracking things he’d ever done...and also the hottest by far.

“I was, um,” he said to Quint, “I was wondering if…actually, nevermind.”

“You want some advice?”

“I guess I do.” he answered. “Even if it’s fake, being here with a guy is…new. And exciting. It’s just been girls up until this point, and it took me a long time learning how to act just around them.”

“That’s adorable,” Quint commented, pouring a drink and passing it to another patron. “Just stay relaxed, and be honest. If you can’t figure out a way to say something, wait ‘til it comes to you properly to speak.”

That was generally sound advice, but not exactly what Neptune had wanted. What he’d really wanted was advice on how to handle coming to terms with being interested in men...and, if he was honest, not even remotely interested in women. But during the busier hours of a bartender’s workshift was probably not the best or most realistic time to expect such detailed advice.

“What about Sun?” Neptune asked.

“If you’re hoping for something to happen, you’d better say so when he comes back from the bathroom.” Quint answered. “He’s holding his drink well, but these things come strong, and if you let him down too many more limeades, he’ll be too sloshed for responsible sex. At least get his number before leaving if it turns out that’s the case, or if you wanna wait to go that far until later. Better that you be too hesitant than rush and fumble things and have regrets later.”

His number...that was a good idea. Hell, getting it before now would’ve saved a shit ton of time and energy on his part the past two weeks. He had no idea what he really wanted from Sun, and acknowledging that sex might be an answer to that mystery was scary. No way was he ready for that...was he? A shudder went up his spine as he imagined Sun naked, and he felt himself stiffen again.

He resolved to think of tonight as a success. He was in a bar with a very good-looking, friendly guy, and he got his buzz cheap. Sun felt like someone he wanted as a friend at the very least, but if that was all it came to, it was a win in his book, even if he was having trouble keeping his thoughts away from what Sun’s lips might feel like on other parts of his body, or what his ass might look like out of those jeans…

Sun eventually strolled back up, taking the seat next to him, and it was time for Quint to get back to his other duties. But there were no awkward silences: Sun had plenty to say, and even more to ask.

Their conversation kept them going through yet another drink each, with waters to match. Sun wanted to know all about him, and despite the fact that that smile made him weak and made him stutter over his words, it also made words flow out of him without stopping, as though he couldn’t deny the man anything. Neptune ended up telling him about his roommates Sage and Scarlet, his fondness for technology and especially electronics, his love of cars and racing, his abysmal cooking and how Sage wasn’t much better, how he used to dye his hair black to cover up the blue because it was too attention-grabbing…Sun and ruffled his hair on that last one and said that much was a scandal.

He was feeling it. The thing he’d lacked with pretty much every girl he’d ever gone on a date with: _chemistry_.

And time slipped away from them, bit by bit.

🍒🍒🍒

It was time to leave, he’d said. It was almost one in the morning. And Sun had seemed disappointed, though not half as much as Neptune felt. He could’ve sat in there until closing, just chatting the night away. He should have. But he also needed to get home. And now he was walking out of the bar, pulling his jacket tight around him one-handed. One-handed, because his fingers were intertwined with Sun’s, without him having realized it.

They strode out onto the sidewalk, Neptune looking around at the parked cars and taking note that his own was still there. He felt a squeeze at his palm, and turned towards his...date.

Sun’s smile was gorgeous. It made his knees weak. And he was beckoning for Neptune to come closer, which he obediently did.

“Tonight was fun.” the faunus said. “I really enjoyed it.”

“Yeah, no problem at all.” the swimmer answered, breathless. “I had fun, too.”

Then, Sun leaned up and kissed him on the cheek. Neptune’s face felt hot. The place where Sun had kissed him seemed to burn slightly.

“Thanks for getting me a drink, handsome, even if it was just pretend.”

There was silence for a moment while their gazes stayed locked together.

Somehow, Neptune knew what would happen before it did. Just like last time, the first time, the silence between them seemed to function as a trigger. There was no conscious decision, it just happened, the two of them leaned towards each other as though magnetized. They fell together.

Their lips met gently, but that gentleness gave way to desire. Neptune closed his eyes, and he couldn’t stop himself from going deeper, kissing harder, letting his arm wrap around Sun’s waist. A hand was cupping his cheek. Though there was only a couple inches’ height difference, he felt himself bend, pulled downward and around. Then they were leaning into each other, holding each other. Need was overpowering everything in his brain right now. Their tongues tangled, their hands wandered, and he had never been harder in his life. Neptune felt a hand squeeze his ass through his jeans, and he growled approvingly into the kiss, hips grinding forward in response. He felt like he could do something scandalous right here on the street, and unlike the first time this had happened, he felt like he just might.

And then, just like that, it was over. Sun’s hands slipped from his chest and butt, and there was space between them again. Neptune was left standing there, mesmerized by Sun’s soft smile with a tent in his pants that was probably visible from space.

“There. Just so you know what you’re missing.”

Sun was starting to walk away. Neptune felt like he’d just been given whiplash. Ohhh, no. No, they were not doing this. He wasn’t going to let that be goodbye, not on a note like that, at least.

“Y-you’re…going home, then?” he asked, voice cracking. He watched, but Sun didn’t seem to be heading for any of the cars out here.

“Yep. See ya around, Neptune.”

It was great that he wasn’t going to drive, even if he wasn’t showing his alcohol intake, but Neptune felt like something was off. Maybe he’d better…

“Wait.” Neptune called after him. “Let me drive you home.”

Sun stopped and looked back at him, and Neptune saw an expression on his face that was unfamiliar. Was it…worry?

“Uh, that’s okay.” he called back, still walking away without looking where he was going. “I don’t really like people knowing where I live, yanno?”

Something clicked in Neptune’s brain. Sun had popped up for this faux-date thing just as a good bar was giving huge discounts, after two weeks of not spotting him at any of the district’s venues. He wracked his brain, trying to remember the night he’d first met the man that had induced the stirring inside him. The bar he’d been in at the time...hadn’t they had some kind of deal going on? And he had no car, and he didn’t want people knowing where he lived…

Sun was poor. He might even be homeless.

“Hey! Hey, wait!”

Neptune ran after him, calling out. Neptune himself wasn’t the richest guy on the planet, but he was more financially secure than a lot of guys his age. Sun was at least his equal in appearances, with a look that screamed ‘center of attention’ and ‘everybody’s favorite’. It was the kind of look you expect on popular jocks like himself, people whose parents didn’t have to be rolling in it, but who had enough to let their kid wear nice clothes. He would never have expected that someone exuding so much self-confidence wasn’t well-off. But maybe Sun was like himself—putting in large amounts of effort into appearance to correct an image problem.

“Sun!” he said, panting as he caught up to Sun, who turned around with a very definitely uneasy look on his face. “Sun, why don’t you come home with me? Stay the night. It’s late, plenty of thugs out, and…”

Sun’s eyes met his.

“And…?” he asked.

Neptune cursed himself.

“And…it would be nice to have you.”

The look on the faunus’ face steadily changed back into that gleaming grin that made Neptune’s blood pound.


	4. Popping

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Popping the Cherry_ : losing one's virginity.

“Here we are.”

Neptune stepped over his threshold, into the fairly large, lavish apartment he shared with Sage and Scarlet. Sun trotted along in his wake, closing the door behind him. Both of them shook off their shoes in the front hall. And now that they were here, the only thing left to do was to decide what they were going to do. He wasn’t stupid, he knew they both had some expectation of something happening between them, but he still wasn’t done considering everything that meant, and if he was…well, if he was _really_ ready. He could feel Sun’s gaze burning the back of his neck. What should he do? It was too late to get a movie going, and late enough that coffee was a very bad idea. Maybe he should just play by the letter of his words and simply invite Sun to sleep on the couch whenever he felt like it.

He turned around to speak to Sun, whose hands were in his pocket while he looked around the house, and when their eyes finally met, he still hadn’t come up with a plan, or words to say.

“You have a nice place.” Sun said, and he didn’t seem as uncomfortable as Neptune, but his voice didn’t have that easygoing charm behind it that it usually had, either.

“I guess. I have help from my roommates.” Neptune said, mouth oddly dry.

There was silence for a few very long moments.

“Are your roommates down with you bringing people over late at night?”

“They’re not home right now.” Neptune said, before hurriedly adding, “they probably would be cool with it. Maybe not graceful this late, but still, they don’t mind. They bring home friends and fuck buddies all the time.”

“That’s cool. Which one should I aim for?”

“...Huh?” Neptune asked, confused.

“Friends, or fuck buddies? Which one are you hoping we’ll be?”

Neptune had been put on the spot, and for an instant, he was wrestling with himself, convinced that to select either option was to close the door to the other one. Sun was a great guy, and he was pretty sure this was his last chance to reaffirm himself. If he wanted to shut this down, let the other man down gently and declare himself firmly heterosexual despite whatever he may have done in the past hour, now was his chance. Before he could fully settle on that decision, though, another answer had presented itself, and it was out of his mouth before he could fully weigh it.

“Both would be nice.”

A smile broke out on Sun’s face, and he was laughing, and then Neptune was laughing too. The heaviness of the mood abated somewhat.

“You’re nervous, aren’t you?”

“I…yeah…” Neptune admitted. “I’m not—I’m not usually like this, about sex, I swear. It’s just…” he took a deep breath, looking away, before glancing back at Sun and trying to read his face. He hoped he’d understand. “I mean, I thought I was straight until a few weeks ago. A few hours ago, actually.”

Sun raised both eyebrows. “Do you still _want_ to be straight?”

He was right, Sun had understood. They both knew that if he was gay, all the pretending in the world wasn’t going to make a difference, but he could still put his foot down for tonight and keep the ruse going for himself if that was what he chose. It was a genuine question, an offer to keep the secret if there even was one.

“I…yeah. I want to, a lot. But…I also kind of really want to see what could happen tonight. I’m just too much of a wuss about it, is all. This is pretty scary.”

“That’s okay,” Sun said, “do you want to let me handle most of it?”

Neptune nodded fervently. That would be a lot easier. He was clearly more experienced in this department.

Sun stepped close, and took Neptune’s hand, and his heart hammered in his chest. He was led over to his own couch, which faced the television set and had its back to the living room window. He took the furthest side while Sun took the one opposite. Keeping hold of the hand he’d taken, Sun waited until they were both sat down properly, then slowly brought it over his shoulder. He took the other hand, and brought it to his waist. Neptune gulped.

“Close your eyes.”

Neptune obeyed. From what he could feel, the target wasn’t his waist, more his waist _band_. Very deliberately and slowly, he felt his own fingers directed slowly up Sun’s stomach. He felt it flex under his fingers, and his cock twitched in his pants. He wouldn’t know if the faunus was in the same boat, but as his fingers moved up over an abdomen sculpted from marble with about a six…eight…ten… hundred-or-so-pack, he definitely felt himself get hard. This was less scraping at the wall, and more kicking at the rubble. Right now, he felt very, very gay.

But his hand was moving. And he realized that his hand was moving even after Sun’s fingers had left his wrist. He blindly felt up the body next to him, and judging by the steady rise and fall underneath his fingers, Sun didn’t mind at all. His roving touch rose from abdomen to chest, passing the gold chain warmed from his body heat and taking in the feeling of a pair of pecs mostly hidden from view by that white jacket he wore open, but every bit as powerful as the rest of him. The arm that was draped over Sun’s shoulder was nudged out of the way, leading him to realize that said jacket was being shrugged off. Neptune opened his eyes, and instantly got harder.

That collarbone. Those cords just under his ribs. Those _shoulders_. God, they made his mouth water. His cock in his pants can’t get much stiffer, and Neptune first chances a glance down at Sun’s pants, confirming that yes, he was hard too, and then up at his face, to see him smiling at him, eyes glinting.

Sun reached over and started undoing the buttons on his own shirt one-handed, his other arm having been draped over Neptune’s shoulder as well. He was very close, close enough for the swimmer to hear him breathing, feel it. His jacket steadily came undone, and the hand not around him took him by the waist to pull him close.

“A-Aahh…”

There was a pause.

“You’re still nervous.”

Sun read him easily. But then, Neptune was never very good at hiding what he was feeling.

“Yeah, a little.”

“Remember when you and I made out in front of all those people at the club? In front of the bartender? This is easy compared to that, right? It’s just us, after all.”

Though Neptune thought the situations, being ‘making out’ and ‘sex’, were rather drastically different, he nodded anyway, figuring he could still make use of that logic. The toughest step was directly ahead, and there were no barriers to making it happen. Just himself. All he had to do was lean over and do it.

More nervous than he could remember being in a long, long while, he leaned over and let his lips touch Sun’s.

Just like before, it wasn’t some huge difference. Sun seemed content, once he had established himself, to take over the…direction, of the kiss, while Neptune used this opportunity to experiment. He tried to be brave. He moved his lips slightly different than he normally would, occasionally bit Sun’s lower lip gently. A hum from his partner said he approved. When Sun introduced tongue into the mix, he let it happen and reciprocated.

It was…good. Once he got started, it wasn’t even difficult. Sun was a very good kisser, and soon both men’s hands were moving again. That part wasn’t quite the same as usual; the other man had a lot more muscle mass than Neptune was used to feeling on a girl, and his clothing choices were simpler as well. And now that he was going this far, he felt it. That spark, that heat, that he’d been missing with all the women.

God, he wanted more.

Clothes came off, bit by bit. It was mostly Sun at work—Neptune had way more clothing on him to begin with. Belts first while the shirt was shrugged off, then his jeans, and finally his undershirt. Sun took just enough time to remove their socks before Neptune was somehow on his back under his palm, and somehow not minding that fact one bit. The kiss had become very intense.

He supposed, while he languidly made out with Sun and slipped a hand beneath the waistband to feel an ass so muscular he’s surprised the grey boxers could contain it all, that he should be having some sort of internal crisis by now. The faunus was between his legs, and grinding his also-barely-contained boner against Neptune’s own, still stuck in the cage of his white briefs. There were no words said, no conscious decision made, but they both knew Neptune would be the bottom. But as he sucked on Sun’s tongue, he found that he just couldn’t muster up the energy to mind. However, it did jolt him when he remembered something critical. He’d forgotten something major, something they couldn’t continue without—damn it, he was so stupid! Hating himself as he did so, he halted the kiss and pressed a hand against the faunus’ sculpted chest, pushing him away.

“Sun, wait. I’m not prepared.”

Sun instantly backed off, as though burned. His face had ‘concern’ written all over it.

“You wanna stop? I can stop.”

“No, no, it’s not that—” Neptune answered, going a little pink in the face and not meeting Sun’s eyes. “I just mean—I didn’t expect tonight to happen. I don’t have any condoms on me. Or lubricant.”

“I’ll go and get them. Hang tight.”

Neptune was not prepared to hear that, or see or stop what happened next—Sun was _fast_. He had leaned up, slid off the couch, reached for Neptune’s discarded jeans, and snagged the wallet from within the back pocket with absurd ease. Before the swimmer could do more than sit up, let alone interfere, Sun had hopped the back of the couch, strode over to the window, pushed it open, and leapt out. Neptune scrambled over, tripping over himself, to see Sun twenty feet below, already jogging off.

...

......

......Well, that was it, then, wasn’t it? He’d just been robbed. He felt like he’d just walked into a wall he hadn’t seen, or fallen off the edge of a building. That sudden bare feeling of complete interruption, of nothing dropping down onto him when he’d been…not just involved in something, but having fun, doing something thrilling, ready to throw himself into something new.

He sighed, lifted his hand to the windowsill, and contemplated slamming it shut. But he didn’t. That’d be closing the door on this whole night, calling it a failure. He’d prefer to bleed his feelings out slowly rather than end it himself.

He strode back to the couch, boner steadily deflating as he threw himself down on it and picked up his Scroll to start flicking through messages. Perhaps, he thought as his eyes moved over the screen without reading anything, he wasn’t dealing with a thief who’d taken advantage of him twice over tonight. Even though that felt like naivete bordering on idiocy, he thought it anyway. Maybe Sun wasn’t just some asshole who’d taken advantage of obvious interest from a gullible guy. Maybe, he thought bitterly, Sun was just incredibly dumb, and tactless, and maybe cops were going to show up at his door later tonight with a mostly-nude faunus in tow having heard the man’s pleas that he lived with the guy on the ID in the wallet, and he’d be more than happy to return it if they’d just look the other way this time…

Five minutes passed, and Neptune threw his phone down onto the floor and stared at the ceiling. Wouldn’t it be nice to just be able to forget it all and go to sleep? Fat chance… Ten minutes passed, and he ignored more notifications from his phone as the light played against the ceiling. Fifteen minutes passed, and he got up to get a bottle of water from the kitchenette. He should really just head to bed…

…?

He’d heard something from the living room, but when he walked back in, nothing was different. He looked around, and…

...

There it was again. There were sounds outside, thuds and taps and sounds of shuffling. Neptune reached for his phone, wondering if he was being an idiot again in his hopes. And then, there was a flash of yellow, and he was left agape as the errant thief, or so he’d thought, actually returned through the open window, leaping through it one-handed.

“I—you—where did you—?”

Sun was holding something under his left arm, which Neptune realized with a swallow was a bottle and a box. In the fingers were clutched his wallet, which was quickly tossed back at him, hitting his chest and sliding off onto the floor as he simply stared. He really had done that.

“I got the stuff.” the faunus said proudly, his tail flicking back and forth as he presented the items: lubricant and condoms, neither brand of which he was familiar with.

“How the _hell_ did you not get arrested?!” Neptune hissed, despite there being no reason to keep his voice low. “What were you going to do if a cop came along to take you in for indecent exposure?”

“It’d have to be a _really_ straight cop.” Sun said, winking, and Neptune’s cock twitched in his briefs. Neptune tried to imagine the only thing that could’ve happened given that Sun hadn’t returned more dressed than he’d been when he left, which was him strolling into the store in his underwear and casually sliding the things he’d bought over to a stunned cashier while whatever late night goers looked on in shock.

Sun was grinning a wide, gleaming grin now, and he strode over to the open end of the couch, displaying himself. Had he somehow gotten more gorgeous in the twenty minutes he’d been gone? His eyes drifted down to Sun’s boxers. He wasn’t hard, but he made a sizeable imprint against them anyway.

“So,” he said, tossing the bottle of lube up and down in his hand, “should we get started?”

🍒🍒🍒

“Aaagh…”

Neptune couldn’t hold back a moan as Sun slid in. It felt...it felt pretty much like he’d imagined it would, if he’d ever imagined it. Consciously, anyway. Shit, if this was what sex with a man felt like, he might could get over being gay a lot quicker. Sun took him slow, sinking in inch by inch, and Neptune’s eyes closed and his toes curled. When he felt the other man’s balls still against his butt, he felt like it was safe to let his body take over again, tightening around the cock within him. Sun groaned, and that made him happy.

He felt Sun’s weight as he leaned down over him, and felt lips connect with his. He welcomed them, welcomed the tongue that slid between his lips and across his own. His arms wrapped around the other man, pulling him down and close. He hated it when those lips broke away, but loved it when they traveled across his jaw and over to his ear.

“So,” came Sun’s purr with a slight rasp, “still think you’re straight?”

He could feel Sun’s length throbbing inside him, even though they were at rest.

“N-No...” Neptune said weakly, and a small laugh made its way out of him. “I guess I’m not.”

“Good,” Sun growled, and Neptune shuddered, “who the hell wants to be straight anyway?”

Neptune had to agree as they locked lips again and he felt Sun pull back, sending tingles _and_ chills up his spine until he stopped with just the head inside, and then sank back in again just as easily, doubling the sensations. When the faunus broke away again, he instead moved his jaw down to Neptune’s neck and shoulder, laying bites along them that made him melt even further.

“This your first time?” the other man mumbled against his flesh.

“Y-yeah,” Neptune answered, suddenly rather self-conscious, “first time with a guy, anyway.”

“Then keep your eyes closed.”

All of a sudden, he was being moved, being lifted. He wrapped his arms tighter around Sun’s broad back, held his legs clamped closed around his waist, tried not to whimper when the weight change resulted in a particularly good shock to his insides. They weren’t even having proper sex yet, but he was losing himself in all of the little ways his body was being affected, like some virgin instead of a highly experienced jock that he was. He kept his eyes closed as instructed, feeling himself carried as though it were nothing to lug around a 6’3” swimmer. A door opened, and he realized just before his back hit the sheets that Sun had laid him down on his own bed.

“You didn’t have to take it to the bedroom, ya know,” Neptune panted, “I wouldn’t have minded the couch.”

“Nah, you’re gettin’ your cherry popped _right_. First time’s always gotta be special.” Sun said, adjusting himself atop Neptune. Their lips met again.

“Breathe deep.” came a murmured instruction. Neptune obeyed.

Sun slid out slowly, and Neptune gripped him tighter. Then, he slid back in again, deep, until his balls were stilled against him again. Neptune liked that, the sweet and slow, but he felt like he could be a little more daring.

“Faster.” he whispered. Sun didn’t disappoint. He set a modest pace, and that was way better—Neptune craned up to bury his head in Sun’s neck as the sensations of being stretched and filled doubled, and he felt his toes curling again. His partner was still using those long, deep strokes at the same time, something that made him want to throw his head back. Instead, he just pulled Sun down on top of him so he could do that and still feel his breath in his ear.

He wished this could go on forever. If it were possible, he would have. Maybe it was just his inexperience speaking, or maybe it was just how good Sun was with his dick, but he knew he’d be hard-pressed to find sex this good from someone else. Unfortunately, it did stop, and rather sooner than he expected, but there was no need to be alarmed about an early end—Sun had brought the lubricant with them. The momentary pause was just long enough for him to drip a little more onto his cock, before it was pushed back in, boosting the feelings even higher right as Neptune had realized things were getting slightly dry.

“ _Nnngh_ —”

When he resumed, Sun’s pace was no longer modest. He leaned up and away from Neptune, causing him to whine, and braced his arms on either side of him, changing the angle. When he picked back up with a fast, hard, pounding motion, Neptune’s moan quickly rose into a scream. With what took a surprising amount of energy, he hoisted himself up to balance on his palms, letting the very slight change in angle finally perfect things.

“ _Aagh!_ ”

Neptune opened his eyes, finding that Sun’s eyes had been closed as well. His ridiculously sculpted chest was heaving, his shoulders rolling, and the sight of it was killing Neptune. Somehow the pace picked up even faster, finally abandoning the long, deep strokes and simply jackhammering back and forth, striking deep over and over and just brushing against that spot in him he’d never known existed, sending lightning up and down his spine—

“ _Aah, aah, aah—ghh, hah, hah…_ ”

He came, without ever even touching his cock. He only realized his orgasm was happening when it hit him straight in the face, coating him from everywhere just under his hair to down to his navel. Sun kept going as Neptune melted underneath him going limp and closing his eyes as the furious pounding continued, mustering up only enough energy to spread his legs just slightly and give him better access. He felt like it was forever before he was feeling the stillness and tightness of the faunus pressing up against him as deep as he could, absent what Neptune had envisioned as a vague wetness thanks to the condom wrapped around him.

The other man collapsed on top of him. The swimmer welcomed the weight on top of him, the slight sheen of sweat he felt between them, and the sound of heavy breathing in his ear.

“H…”

Similar half-muffled attempts at words came from Sun, and the two of them passed them back and forth as they regained their breaths. Eventually, they came to a point where they could form sentences.

“So…heh…how was that?”

Neptune gulped. It was all broken open now, wasn’t it? No going back. He was never going to be able to pretend he was straight again after this. Probably wouldn’t even be worth it to pretend at being bi. He looked over at the man next to him, a figure of perfection, a prideful gleam in his eye and a glint on his white teeth as he smiled. He wished Sun would stop doing that, or at least that his cock would stop twitching when he did. Or perhaps something he also had to consider was the way his heart had just fluttered, if indeed it had been his heart and not his lungs.

“Great…More than great, that was amazing.”

“Good first time?”

“Yeah.”

Sun leaned over and kissed him, and yeah, that was definitely his heart floating around in there on butterfly wings. And then Sun got up, and his heart sank again, though not simply for the thought of him leaving. He remembered his suspicions that Sun perhaps did not have a home.

“Stay.” he said, loudly, making sure he commanded a full conversation. “I wanted you to stay the night, remember?”

“S’all right, I’m used to the walk of shame. I’m not gonna hold you to that. It might be awkward explaining to your roommates.”

He saw that in those eyes behind that cheerful gleam. He phrased it like a simple matter of aftercare, a sleeping partner...but there was definitely a want in there, not just a simple offer of companionship.

“They’ll get over it. I want you to stay here, at my place. Not just for the night, but as long as you need to. You don’t have to pay me, or fuck me. You can just stay and be part of the group.”

Sun didn’t speak for a while. He was staring at Neptune curiously, the smile having slipped off his face.

“That’s not necessary, you know. I can survive well-enough on my own.”

“I’m not pitying you, or patronizing you,” he explained. “We have space, you need a place—”

“—and I got a pretty face.” Sun finished for him. Neptune resisted a twitch at his lips. Yes, true, but…

“I’d let you stay even if you were ugly.” he promised. “So, stay. If you really decide you need to leave, I can’t stop you, but I think we’d both like to see each other regularly, right?”

“You’re not wrong about that.” Sun answered, his gleaming grin back in place. “I’ll think it over tonight…scoot over, then.”

Neptune’s heart didn’t just flutter, it soared.

Maybe, Neptune thought as Sun slid under a sheet and he did the same, they could help each other. Not a service for a service or anything, just a matter of two guys helping each other out in areas they needed it. He could offer Sun a place to live, of course. And he thought it might be good for him, living with this guy. His ridiculous confidence, it was...inspiring. Comforting. Like a safety net. If he had to tackle the reality of being gay, he’d probably manage a lot better with a guy like Sun around who knew his way around sexuality. He could use an experienced guy like Sun.

He hoped they could be friends. And he didn’t think that much would be difficult.


End file.
